Put 'crisis' into perspective

12 June 2013 07:16

Roy Hodgson believes talk of a crisis within English football needs putting in perspective.

Numerous high-profile figures have questioned the direction of the Football Association in the wake of England Under-21s' woeful display at the European Championship in Israel. With the senior team also struggling to make next year's World Cup, there has even been talk of a crisis within the English game.

Such a notion was rejected by senior manager Hodgson, speaking after visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem. "Who knows if there's a crisis? What is a crisis? They are the big philosophical questions," the England manager said.

"When do you have to question things in your life? Is it when your team loses a football game? Is it when you can't pay your mortgage? Is it when you suffer a death in the family?

"We are going down maybe too philosophical a route. I found today particularly depressing.

"Maybe I am in a more sensitive mood than otherwise. I thought the whole experience very sobering, especially the Children's memorial."

Hodgson spent almost four hours at the museum along with FA general secretary Alex Horne and chairman David Bernstein.

"It was very emotional for me as I come from a Jewish family in London and was born in 1943 so the holocaust has stayed with me for every day of my life," Bernstein said.

"It has been with me ever since I can remember and it is such a horrific event that will never change. The Nazis very cleverly used propaganda and although it was incredibly sinister, they were particularly clever and adept at it.

"After the First World War they used brilliant propaganda to create a situation where people became conditioned into believing what happened in the First World War wasn't our fault, it was the Jews who were to blame."